COSTA MESA, CA — Key changes were made in senior management at QSC effective January 22, 2007, when Joe Pham began serving as the company's chief operating officer. As the new COO, Pham took over an office long occupied by John Andrews, who will move to jointly share the duties of CEO with brother Barry Andrews. Pham, a UCLA graduate with a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, will report directly to Barry and John Andrews within the new corporate hierarchy. His duties will include day-to-day management of sales, marketing, R&D, operations, human resources, finance and strategy. Currently serving QSC in a dual capacity as CEO and senior VP of sales and marketing, Barry Andrews will in turn relinquish all sales and marketing responsibilities, and the position of senior VP of sales and marketing will be effectively eliminated. Within the new order, QSC founder and chief designer Pat Quilter will continue to steer research and development on QSC's amplifiers. Barry Andrews said upon announcing the organizational changes, "Pat [Quilter], John and I are entrepreneurs — individuals who are comfortable with ambiguity and risk. None of us have formal management training. The company, however, is at a size now where professionally trained leadership can add significantly to our overall effectiveness. Simply put, we want to inject the next level of expertise into our daily operations in order to provide the most opportunity for everyone involved."
Pham joined the QSC ranks in 2004 as the company's chief strategy and technology officer. Just prior to QSC, he spent four years with McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm. Pham's resume also includes time spent as a professor in UCLA's Electrical Engineering Department and with Raytheon's Adaptive Signal Processing Group.
"We aren't trying to build a caretaker administration devoted to the status quo by naming Joe COO," Barry Andrews added. "Actually, we are expecting and encouraging just the opposite. Joe may share our vision, but it's totally up to him to remain flexible and adapt to the needs of the times and a healthy, growing organization."
The origins of QSC date back to 1968, when Quilter, backed by borrowed money from family and friends, formed the Quilter Sound Company in a 400-square-foot rented garage not far from QSC's contemporary corporate headquarters. Barry Andrews joined the operation not long after when his motorcycle broke down nearby, forcing a chance meeting with Quilter that resulted in a job offer. John Andrews, who worked summers at the shop while studying business at the University of Southern California, took control of the company's finances upon graduation, and his brother began to oversee sales and marketing. With Quilter still at the helm of design and engineering, the company was incorporated under the name QSC Audio Products, Inc. in 1979.
Pictured above: John Andrews, Joe Phamm and Barry Andrews.
For more information, visit www.qscaudio.com.
